Keweenaw County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Keweenaw County

Seventy miles of basalt-spined peninsula juts northeast into Lake Superior from the Upper Peninsula mainland — Keweenaw County is Michigan's northernmost, the geographically most-isolated county east of the Mississippi outside the Florida Keys, and the only US county where the historic 7,000-year-old Indigenous copper-mining culture of the Old Copper Complex (carbon-dated by University of Wisconsin archaeology to ~5000 BCE) overlaps directly with 19th-century industrial-revolution copper mining that built the company towns of Calumet, Hancock, and Eagle River. Copper Harbor (population 108) at US-41's northern terminus is the only town in the lower 48 with a seasonal passenger-and-cargo ferry connection to a roadless national park: the Isle Royale Queen IV runs the 56-mile crossing to Isle Royale National Park mid-May through September per NPS concessionaire schedule.

The 9-mile Brockway Mountain Drive climbs to 735 ft above Lake Superior and is the longest above-the-treeline scenic drive between the Rockies and the Adirondacks; the road closes by snowfall and reopens late April. Fort Wilkins Historic State Park at the eastern end of Copper Harbor accepts rigs up to 40 ft with electric hookups across 159 modern sites — the largest state-park RV-friendly base in the western Upper Peninsula and one of two campgrounds inside Keweenaw County (McLain SP near Hancock being the other). The Ottawa National Forest's Bergland Ranger District permits 14-day dispersed camping on Forest Service roads west of US-41. Lake Superior temperatures cap rig-cabin overheating in any summer week — surface water rarely crosses 60°F even in late August.